Classic Covers: Fred Saberhagen
Prolific writer of science fiction and fantasy series, Fred Saberhagen is best known for his Berserker series of far-future space operas in which a beleaguered mankind squares off against a malign machine intelligence, and the Swords series, detailing a massive conflict involving numerous key players and their unique swords of power. Often combining magic, post-apocalyptic, and military themes in his fiction, Saberhagen’s steady...
Classic Covers: Jack Williamson
Few writers can boast as long and as productive a career as SF Grand Master Jack Williamson — this ‘Dean of Science Fiction’ produced scores of short stories and dozens of novels across multiple genres and series during a lifetime that saw him publish work in over eight consecutive decades. Getting his start in the era of the pulps and publishing right through until the first decade of the twenty-first century,...
Classic Covers: More From Jack Vance
We’re celebrating the release of DCC Dying Earth all this Month with articles in honor of Jack Vance. With hundreds of titles in dozens of editions in as many different languages, a catalog of Jack Vance’s prolific output is a feast of diverse and changing visual styles over many years. With cover illustrations as varied as Frazetta-style sword-and-sorcery, heady new age semiotics, surreal horror, literal Tolkien fantasy,...
Classic Covers: Jack Vance
One of the benefits of being an extraordinarily productive and highly-reprinted genre writer during the mass market paperback publishing boom of the mid-twentieth century is you get a terrific amount of amazing visual art forever associated with your name. Jack Vance, author of over 60 books (whenever you see ‘over’ a certain number, that’s a pretty big clue that the author in question is so prolific that it’s...
Ballantine Adult Fantasy: William Morris
One of the most significant figures in the cultural life of Victorian England, William Morris (1834-1896) was everything from a poet, translator, and writer of medievalist fantasy, to a political activist, printer, champion of building preservation, and a renowned innovator in textile manufacturing and interior design. When Lin Carter oversaw the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line (1969-74), he brought many of Morris’ out-of-print...
Classic Covers: Ballantine Fantasy
The decade of fantasy publishing kicked off by the runaway success of the The Lord of the Rings produced not only a flurry of reprints of classic fantasy, but also an entire crop of creative, iconic, and visionary cover designs. Ballantine Books launched its iconic Ballantine Adult Fantasy line on the strength of the fantasy boom, featuring cover art as wonderous as the contents of the books themselves. We’ve gathered together...